Re: pybliographer example and custom bibtex fields

> Although being strict up to a schema is probably a good thing while
> working with multiple bibliography types, imho, it is desirable to allow
> custom (non schema-conforming) fields/records (@strings and may be even
> comments in the preamble of the file) to be present in addition to
> any schema. It is so since most users are using pybliographer not as a
> conversion utility but rather as organizer/editor for their
> bibliographies, they most often would simply edit existing
> bibliographies, which very often might have such customizations.
>
> Otherwise, following strict schema's might hurt a lot in many use cases.
>
> Just my 0.1 cents

I'm painfully aware of these opposite  design goals. I'm currently
experimenting with a merge of 1.2 and 1.3 by restrincting the use of
1.3 to:

 - data exchange with the outside world (external queries, exports in
other formats)
 - citation formatting

In these two areas, having a schema pays off pretty quickly. For the
rest (user interface, actual editing of the records), I'll stick with
1.2 for now.

One solution for writing filters would be to support some sort of
"blob" type, in which the BibTeX reader might stuff what it does not
know, and which might be then recovered by the BibTeX writer later on.
So, even though these fields would not be easily accessible to the
user, common filtering operations would still be doable and lossless
(I also need to provide support for authority fields, so that most of
the "meaningful" @string substitution could be represented in 1.3)
Does that plan sound good enough for the use cases you had in mind?

-- =

Fr=E9d=E9ric

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